'...Milkha Bhaag' shooting to resume after summer break

As north India has been reeling under scorching heat, producer-director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra has decided to halt the shooting of "Bhaag Milkha Bhaag" saying that most of the scenes have to be shot outdoors and this will happen once the weather is bearable.

"We have taken a summer break because it is all outdoors. Once the summer is over, we plan to go back to the north to shoot it," he said and added, "We are planning to release it sometime next year."

The film is a biopic on athlete Milkha Singh, fondly called Flying Sikh, and Farhan Akhtar is playing the title role. Sonam Kapoor too features in it.

From thriller "Aks" to social drama "Rang De Basanti", Mehra, who has worked on various genres, says shooting a biopic is much more challenging than making a pure fiction.

"When I decided to make a film, it threw more challenges for me, because I had not done a film on a true life. I knew everything which I was doing. Each scene has been a big responsibility as it belonged to a real life person. Here the challenge was how to do it in an interesting manner," he said.

"Fortunately, we have a lovely story to tell. The human interest quotient is very high. Whenever I tell the story to my friends, they like it. The script has been written in a very interesting way," he added.

With experiential films like "Shanghai" and "Gangs Of Wasseypur" succeeding at the box office, the director feels that the Hindi film industry is moving in a positive direction, which is the reflection of a changing society.

"There is always a lot to do than what we are actually doing. We made great cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. Then we lost out because our society lost out and we started moving towards groupism. Now the society is changing again and giving importance to prosperity and education. You see this reflecting in cinema also. And there will be a lot more to give to our people rather than just sheer escapism. It all depends on how the country develops," he said.